Economics of Innovation and New Technology· 2026Q1
There are different shades of green: heterogeneous environmental innovations and their effects on firm performance
- 2citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Pollution-reducing and regulation-driven eco-innovations boost employment growth, while resource-saving and pollution-reducing innovations increase productivity. Regulation-driven innovations also positively impact sales growth, with resource-saving innovations showing a weaker positive effect.
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Key points
- Pollution-reducing and regulation-driven eco-innovations foster employment growth.
- Resource-saving and pollution-reducing eco-innovations lead to significant productivity gains.
- Regulation-driven eco-innovations positively affect sales growth.
- Resource-saving eco-innovations have a weaker positive effect on sales growth.
- Pollution-reducing eco-innovations show no significant effect on sales growth.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
While an established literature highlights the variety of firms' eco-innovation strategies, systematic evidence on the heterogeneous effects of different environmental innovations on different dimensions of firm performance is lacking. This study contributes to filling this research gap by estimating the effect of three eco-innovation strategies (resource-saving, pollution-reducing and regulation-driven) on three dimensions of performance (sales growth, employment growth and productivity). Exploiting the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel over the period 2003-2016 and the IPWRA estimator suitable for identification of causal effects, we document heterogeneous effects across eco-innovations and firm performances. Results show that pollution-reducing and regulation-driven eco-innovations foster employment growth, and both resource-saving and pollution-reducing eco-innovations generate sizable productivity gains. Regarding sales growth, there is evidence of a positive effect of regulation-driven innovation, a weaker positive effect for resource-saving innovation, and no significant effect for pollution-reducing innovation.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 2026 · DOI ↗
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